


Plasmobsidian

by Rednaelo



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Age Difference, Karkat is afraid of grown ups, M/M, Post-Sburb/Sgrub, adventures in troll biology, everyone's a troll, mild doses of exhibitionism
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-03-06
Updated: 2014-03-06
Packaged: 2018-01-14 17:52:04
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 11,196
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1275523
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Rednaelo/pseuds/Rednaelo
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“You brought me into the territory of an adult? Are you fucking pan-rotted?”  You’d be screaming if it wouldn’t be a surefire way of alerting the killer down the hallway of your presence.  Oh god, what have you touched in this hive?  Where have you left your scent?  Adults have heightened senses, don’t they?  You’ll be found in an instant.  You jolt sharply when Dave makes some derisive noise at you.  You can practically feel him rolling his eyes, you’re so on edge right now.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Plasmobsidian

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Asuka Kureru (Askerian)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Askerian/gifts).



> Wow. Okay. So.... Uh.
> 
> Apparently I have this thing where if I get inspired by a little ping of what someone says I have to generate like a whole fraction of a novel to appease my roam-brain. This started with just an idle thought and then I wrote for days and ripped whole, huge sections out of the story and came up with a weird way to make a weird pairing work and well, this is what I got. I'm...proud of it like you can be proud of making an absolute fucking mess.
> 
> Here's some nonsense. Enjoy it?
> 
> Oh, also, I got so into it that I made an 8track playlist for this fic. Which is [here](http://8tracks.com/rednaelo/lolar-color).
> 
> Thanks to Asuka for this idea. Hope you dig what I came up with.
> 
> -Querel

You go rigid when the door slams.  There’s another door and a long hallway between you and the door that was slammed but your concerns are due to the fact that Strider’s front door just slammed and Strider is sitting right next to you plowing your ass at the most recent game grub he picked up.  Plowing your ass because you’re clenching the controller like it’s your lifeline instead of using it for its intended purpose.  Strider’s front door just slammed without Strider’s consent.

Apparently, Strider had given the door unspoken consent to slam without him.  He appears unfazed.

“Dude, what the grubloving fuck!” you say, hitting the pause button.

“Wha—,” he growls, annoyed at you and faces your face instead of the screen.  “Did your troll period come all of a sudden?”  His brow furrows a little.  “That isn’t a thing, right? Am I gonna have a troll period now? I don’t think I could handle that. I just got used to having dichotomous troll junk, I don’t think I could cope with having to use troll tampons too.  Just tell me I don’t have to like…shove grubs up my cooch or anything, yeah?”

“Oh my fuck, shut the hell up, you are literally making me nauseous with every word that comes out of your mouth,” you groan, slamming the heels of your hands into your eyesockets to try and squash the image he just put in your head out of your pan.  It doesn’t particularly help.  But you return to your original concern in the hopes that you can get him to focus.  “Who the fuck just came into your house, asshole?”

“What?  Bro, obviously, who else would it be?”

Your gastric sac drops out and finds a block of ice to put in its place.  Your hands slip down so you can push yourself as far into the corner of Dave’s couch as possible, farthest from the door.  The single, unlocked door between you and an  _adult troll_.

You’re as good as dead.

“You brought me into the territory of an  _adult?_ Are you  _fucking pan-rotted?_ ”  You’d be screaming if it wouldn’t be a surefire way of alerting the killer down the hallway of your presence.  Oh god, what have you touched in this hive?  Where have you left your scent?  Adults have heightened senses, don’t they?  You’ll be found in an instant.  You jolt sharply when Dave makes some derisive noise at you.  You can practically feel him rolling his eyes, you’re so on edge right now.

“Dude, you got your crabdad back, yeah?  All of us got our guardians.  Bam, game over, you won, troll biology, human planet, hybrid society, complete with all your dead friends and loved ones free or your money back.  I wasn’t the exception to that prize, you know.”  He flicks his own horn and his mouth twitches weirdly. 

“I didn’t know he lived here, fucknut!”

“John lives with his dad, Rose lives with her mom, Jade goes on worldwide jaunts with her grandpa—”

You groan loudly to get him to shut up and then slap your hand over your mouth and watch the door, wide-eyed.

“I mean, I know the guy is an ugly motherfucker and has a bizarre as fuck personality but then again so does your moirail and you ain’t running from him, are you?”

“Gamzee hasn't molted yet!”

“Scared of grown-ups, Vantas?”

“You aren’t?!”

He shrugs.

“Could be scared of anything if I had a reason to be.  Until I got that reason, there’s no need for that mess.”

You start ticking the reasons off on your claws where he can see.

“Superior strength, superior speed, unchecked bloodlust, episodic ragegasms, authority to cull your sorry ass if you even breathe at them wrong—”

“Oh, right, weren’t all the adults on your planet actually not on your planet at all?” Dave asks, suddenly remembering the pan between his horns.  “So you’ve never seen an adult of your species? _Our_  species now, huh….”

“I’ve seen the Condesce,” you remind him.

“Eesh.  Way to make a first impression,” he concedes. “Well, let’s fix your preconceived notions.”

“Wait. What.”

He turns off the game console slides off the couch, going to the door.

“No, don’t!” you yell, reaching for him.

“Hey, Bro, c’mere a sec.”

Too late.

You launch yourself off the sofa and catch Strider by the back of his neck, digging your claws in to try and drag him back.

“Ouch, dude, the fuck….”

You’re too panicked to verbalize and end up making urged growls and trills at him while pulling him away.  He’s going to get himself killed.  He’s going to get you killed.  You’re both going to die here in his respiteblock.  You’re expecting loud, thundering footsteps but you barely hear the shift of the carpet as a shadow darkens the end of the hall and then a split second later you are dwarfed by the towering figure in the doorway.  Your lips pull back in a snarl, shoulders hunching and head tilting forward to put your pathetic, nubby horns out in front where they will be of essentially no use for defending yourself but it’s not like you can control your defensive instincts.  You got a long enough look at him to know that the top of your horns wouldn’t reach his collarbones if you were standing at full height.  He is goddamned. Enormous.

“’Sup?”

You’re growling on reflex.  His voice is deep and resonant and makes the soft, squishy organs behind your skin and bones wobble and thrum to its timbre. 

“This is my buddy Karkat.  Pardon his manners, he was raised in a barn where they only kept other troll babies and thinks adults are out to chew him up and spit him out again.”  Dave pauses.  “Try not to scare him too much? I like having him around.”

Dave keeps talking.  Your eyes focus on what you can see of the adult Strider.  You didn’t see his face before you put your horns out but you can _feel_  him watching you, his gaze tracing the smallness of your body and your preciously pathetic attempt at a threat display.  You suddenly realize that your efforts to keep yourself defensible are not only futile but also incredibly pitiable.  Your growling softens and fades and your face lifts, offering surrender.  If you were any match for your opponent, you wouldn’t give up that stance for a second.  Thinking about those eyes roving you made you understand that even making an attempt at being formidable would be construed as indecent.

You swallow hard and meet his eyes instead.  You’re impeded because he, like his brother, is wearing shades.  Only his are pointy and even more ridiculous.  The ridiculousness does nothing to offset the dryness of your mouth or the wildness in your bloodpusher.  You can still feel him looking at you.  His gaze is lightning on your skin.

He leans against the doorframe and watches you while Dave babbles, every now and then offering monosyllabic hums of agreement to prove that he’s still listening even though you are absolutely certain not a speck of his attention is on anything but picking out the tender spots on your tiny body to sink his blade into.

He’s goddamn huge and his voice is like thunder at moonrise and his eyes, even hidden, are electric and his skin…. His skin is black.  He is a force of nature that called volcanoes to erupt and they offered their blackest ashes to anoint him.   He’s lean and muscled like a Cavalreaper; the bones of his cheeks, his jaw, are so sharp you’re eyes are watering just looking at him.  His horns angle back and upwards mimicking the jagged cut of his shades.  They’re weapons of his own biology, stark contrast to your own.

You are absolutely nauseated with terror.  Which makes being simultaneously awed by his beauty a fascinating experience.  Disembodied for a minute, you stare yourself in the face—you’re wide-eyed, mouth agape, blushing bright and making faint whimpering noises—and try to berate yourself for being an absolute bulge-brain, but then he moves.  You startle back into yourself, flinching away to stare at his hand as it lifts and slowly curls into a fist, held out to you.

“’Sup, Karkat?” he says; the reverberation literally makes your bones vibrate.  You fucking  _chirp_.  And slap your hands over your mouth, going wide-eyed as one smooth, almost invisible eyebrow arches over the glimmer of triangular lenses, it’s echo mirrored on Dave’s features.  Then you cough a little obnoxiously and lower your hands, trying to gain your dignity back.  You bump your (tiny, dwarfed, insignificant) fist against his and don’t keep contact for even half a second.

“Yeah, nice to hhhnnh—” your voice catches, “— _ahhegh!_ nmmmh…meet you.”

“You a’right there, little dude?” he asks you.  You bite your bottom lip hard to keep another chirp back. 

“Fine,” you eventually squeak, blood pooled in the corner of your mouth.  He’s skeptical but doesn’t press it, thank god.

“Pizza’s on the table,” he tells both of you.  Then slips away like a shadow.

You breathe like your airsacs have been released from ropes and clamps, melting to the floor in a mishmash of awkward joints and bonelessness.  Dave does you the great favor of shutting the door again and then crouching beside you, face close to yours and eyebrow still piqued.

“Okay,” he says, “I haven’t been a troll for long.  There’s still shit that baffles the fuck out of me.  But if there’s one thing I’ve always been good at, it’s reading more about people than they think they’re communicating.”

“Strider…,” you warn him.

“And the neat thing,” he goes on, “about being a troll is that now we have communication via _pheromones_  which makes the whole nonverbal language super psycho and holy fuck Karkat you got it bad for my Bro.”

“Goddammit,” you growl, putting your face in your hands.

“You went from zero to sixty faster than you jump from grumbly to shouty on a bad day.  What the hell, man?”

“What do you want me to say?” you snap at him.  Your brain is still barely working, cognizance sluggish to catch up with you after your brains have been soaked with terrified mating hormones.  Does it make any sense to be scared out of your mind and into your nook?  You feel like you could testify to the experience.  You’re becoming more conscious of your own body, nerves registering and sensations relaying back to you.  Muscles clenching and relaxing spastically.  A low and persistant throb dying away at the horizon of your awareness.  You take a few long breaths and shake your head.

“Dude, if you want on his ugly man meat then just go talk to him,” Dave says, shrugging.

“Are you fucking kidding me?” you say, exasperated.  “He’s an  _adult_.  I haven’t even gotten used to the fact that he could literally turn me inside out without even trying and yet, for whatever reason, _won’t_ , because he’s a has-been human, the palesluts and pity-takers of the goddamn universe.  And I am a gimped little nothing with nothing to offer him but—”

“Look, dude,” Dave says, pushing you over onto the floor and laying down next to you like you’re about to get your confession on under the stars, “we risked and lost our lives and came back with a weird but functional reality.  We’re kings, you and I and all of our buddies.  So go conquer.”

You turn your head and leer at him.

“And you’re just completely fine with all of this,” you say.

“Whatever, man,” he insists.  “Not saying you gotta rip your clothes off and go present yourself or anything.  Just go talk to him.  He’s not much for conversation but I know  _you_  can talk for days.  He listens.  I’ll even save some pizza for you.”

“Still doesn’t explain why you’re so fucking cavalier about the prospect of your hatefriend having…a crush on your biologically-related lusus.”

“Maybe I just want you to try doing something you want for once instead of convincing yourself that you don’t deserve a chance at happiness.”

You turn your face towards Dave and stare at his profile, the curve of his horns and the soft fall of his hair over his face.

“…should give rethinking the whole quadrants thing a try,” he adds.  “It didn’t translate over from your old world. No need to go shoving everything in a box just for old time’s sake.”

You sigh and sit up and go to the door.

“Let’s go eat,” you say.  “Maybe if I get some decent food in my stomach besides apple juice and Doritos, I might find a couple of brain cells to rub together to make sensible decisions.”

You manage to calm down after eating a quarter of a pizza and thoroughly plowing Dave’s ass in the next game.

 

* * *

You stay the morning over, curled up against Dave in his coon like you’re still wrigglers.  He thrashes a little in his sleep and you wake up every time.  By dusk you’re awake enough to not lull back into the sopor and catch a few hours.  You haul yourself up onto the rim and wait for the slime to dribble off of you.  You swipe it out of your hair and flick some on Strider’s face.  Course the fucker doesn’t even stir because he sleeps like a cinderblock. 

You pull on your boxer briefs and one of Dave’s shirts—the sleeves are too long and the chest is too tight but whatever—and shuffle out to grab some cold pizza for breakfast.  Sleep-drunk and stupid you belatedly wonder where Dave’s Bro is as you shove pizza crust between your fangs and throw another slice into the microwave.

He’s on the futon.  Watching you.

You freeze.  There’s no movement save for the glass plate turning in the microwave.  The machine beeps when it’s done.  And then again thirty seconds later because you still haven’t moved.  Your heart feels like it picked up in panic and started migrating all over your body looking for a hiding place. 

“You gonna get that?”

You’d swear that at some point in your life you had enough brain power to know how to shut down unnecessary reactions.  Your body doesn’t want to listen to you.  Just to him.  And his thunder-purr voice.  You swallow hard on the bite that had been still and soggy in your mouth.  You hit the ‘off’ button on the microwave so it won’t beep anymore.  And then you turn towards him, wiping your mouth with the back of your hand, getting pizza sauce on the sleeve of Dave’s shirt.

Dave told you there was no way Bro would hurt you.  Bro doesn’t hurt anyone unless they deserve it, he’d said.  And then went on to say that ever since they came to this new reality, Bro had always been particularly gentle. Easygoing and unwilling to antagonize. 

“Apparently he’s taught me all he can, grasshopper,” Dave explained, shrugging. “Now he’s just like some chill roommate instead of an obnoxious asshole trying to get the jump on me every ten seconds.  Go figure.  Dying must mellow you out.”

So, no, you aren’t afraid.  Not in your mind.  But you’re still reacting like you are.  Your veins are full of adrenaline and you can feel your muscles tremble with potential energy.  You’re wound tighter than a spring.  And you know for sure that you’re putting off the scent that spells all this out to him. You are losing a duel that never started.

“Maybe later,” you mumble.

You face the hallway and wobble away, trying to look casual but still book it back to Dave’s room.

“Whoa, hold up, little dude.”

You freeze.  Instinct says it’s because you’d rather obey because disobedience will get you culled.  Your second thought tells you it’s actually because you want to hear what he has to say.

“C’mere, sit a while.”

You hear a large, gloved hand pat the seat next to him on the futon.  Refusal to disobey.  Desire to linger.  Which one is the real reason?  Does it have to be one or the other?  They work pretty well in concert.  And you’re tugging Dave’s shirt down over your thighs, head down as you slouch over to the futon. 

“What,” you say, occupied with your toes pressing together and pressing on top of one another.  He just chuckles.  It’s a low and lovely noise.  You bite the inside of your mouth.

“Sit here,” he repeats, amused.

You sit.  You don’t look at him.  You know what’ll happen if you do.  You’ll lose yourself again.  And god, if Dave could smell the want coming off of you, you know for a fact that his guy can too.  You don’t even know his damn name.  You’re assuming he doesn’t have a title.  That was a sort of archaic tradition done by the adults of Alternia. He may be an adult troll but you’re learning that you shouldn’t expect has-been humans to act like trolls just because they are trolls now.

“Dave’s talked about you before,” he says.  You’re sitting less than an arm’s length away but it feels like his voice is right against you.  It’s in the shiver that runs down your spine like sudden fingertips. “Said you were a good friend after all the shit you kids went through.  If a bit loud.  I dunno, you seem pretty quiet to me.”

You can’t help your laugh. It barks out sharp and makes you rip a little at the flesh inside your mouth since you’d clamped down on it. 

“You don’t know,” you assure him.

“Guess not.  Prove me wrong.”

“I don’t have to prove anything to you,” you grumble.  “Can I go now?”

“Didn’t mean to offend you, dude.  I was havin’ a conversation.”

“Why do you even care?” you ask him, looking over to him.  It was a mistake but you’re not going to take it back now.  You have to own this shit.  “What does it matter to you?  I’m of no consequence to you and whatever it is that you do with your bizarre human/non-human life.  I’m Dave’s friend.  I can stick with bothering just him and keep bothering you to a minimum, but not if you’re going to put me on the fucking spot like this.”

He’s frowning.  You’re shaking a little.  You’re eyes feel heavy in your skull.

“Dave said that trolls don’t have families,” he says after a while, pensive, almost.

“We have quadrants,” you say.

“That ain’t the same.  I’m talking about people of your own species.  People who live in your house and take care of you and make you strong, protect you when you’re weak.  Get under your skin and up in your shit and watch over you for years and years until you’re ready to go be on your own.  You didn’t have that.”

“No,” you sigh, a little exasperated, digging your claws into your palms.  “We didn’t have that.  We had a custodian to look after who looked after us in turn.  Every encounter with another of our species was a question of walking away with scars or not walking away at all.  We made friends on the internet so we could actually have relationships develop instead of debating whether or not we should attack each other.”

“Yeah, see, that shit ain’t healthy,” he says, shaking his head a little.  “And that’s upright pathetic, coming from me.”

“Is there a point somewhere in this soul-searching exploration into my shitty culture?”

“Yeah, what I’m trying to say is that you don’t have to hang onto your ignorance.”

You level him with the most pointed, vehement glare you have ever given anyone.  He isn’t deterred in the slightest.

“You’ve never been around any adults.  You’ve never been around me.  So quit making assumptions about what I want and what I’m gonna do and maybe try thinking about me as just another person.  Like you said, my involvement in your life doesn’t have to be some huge deal but you’re my kid brother’s best friend.  You gotta be a decent kid; Dave’s got good taste.  I’m curious.  Just tryin’ to fill in the blanks.”

Your rage is steadily quelled and you drop your head to look down at your claws. There are indents in the calloused flesh of your palms.

“I just don’t get why,” you confess under your breath.  “The other humans…they had to put up with us because we were the ones bothering them.  It just doesn’t make sense why anyone would want to bother me.”

“Call it karma if it makes you feel better,” he says.  You have no idea what he’s talking about but there’s a little hint of a smile at the corner of his black lips.  God, he’s so dark all over, he practically melts into the shadows.  Your bloodpusher thrums, thinking about it.  He really is beautiful….  You have no idea where Dave got off on calling him an ugly motherfucker.

“What…what is it you wanted to know, then?” you try.  If the adult wants to know you for his own reasons you don’t see why you can’t indulge him a bit.  And indulge yourself a little while you’re at it.  If only to look at him longer.  You think you could look for days and go without eating.

“I’m more of an observer,” he tells you.  “How about you just talk about whatever you feel like and I’ll fill in my blanks from there.”

You end up, first, just babbling about how you don’t even know what the fuck you’re talking about.  You end up telling him about all your other friends.  You tell him about Gamzee.  You tell him about how you used to have a hatecrush on Egbert.  You tell him about the time his brother forced you to draw human bulges all over everything.  That makes him laugh.  And then you tell him about how you like romcoms and he tells you about how he likes robotics.  You tell him about Equius; he raises an eyebrow and smirks.

Dave picks this time to come out, dragging his feet along the carpet with soft shhhf-shhhf noises, shades amiss.  He halts at the table and crams cold pizza into his mouth.

“Mornin’, hummin’bird,” Bro croons at him.  Dave mutters something and shhhfs away again.  Bro just chuckles.  You catch a split-second of smile before it fades into the darkness of him once more.

“What was it like, being that numbskull’s lusus?” you ask him. You're leaned against the back of the couch, body turned towards him as the night floods in through the blinds.  Your knees are tucked under your chin, arms wrapped around your shins.

“Incredibly entertaining,” he says.  “A lot of fucking work.  But I tried to keep it interesting for both of us.”

“I guess I have you to thank for how much of a bulgeknot he turned out to be.”

“Only a little.  Most of that couldn’t be helped.  I did all I could.”

“Don’t be fooled, Vantas,” Dave says rejoining you, wearing a shirt this time.  “I could’ve been normal if any other asshole picked me up.”

“You’d also be boring as fuck, I’m sure,” Bro adds.  “Also, did I miss the memo about the no-pants club meeting?”

“Putting on pants after crawling out of the slime is just asking for a bad wax job,” Dave mumbles.

“Either that or I’m about to be the unsuspecting filling to a debauched twink sandwich.”

“Wow, no, goodbye.”  Your cue to abscond is up and you don’t miss it.

 

* * *

 You do your absolute damndest to not think about Bro Strider ever again.  Of course, your absolute damndest doesn’t amount to shit and you are much more effective at accepting the fact that you are always tiptoeing at the precipice of a huge fuckup.  Dave has this flippant but sincere desire for your happiness that apparently crowds out his common sense about how lunatic this whole thing is.  And he tells you things about Bro that he thinks you should know but probably won’t find out from the man himself.  Things like how Bro was a pornstar once upon a time and yeah, his videos are still floating around on the web somewhere.  Your damndest isn’t keeping you from thinking about that either.

Even so, you still have threads of sanity to stitch together into sense: a safety net for you before you fall and break your heart.  You are a wiggler and Bro is big and beautiful and interesting and terrifying and a host of other things that separate him from you in very reasonable ways.  You with him…it’s a fantasy.  A stupid one.  You’re not so assbackwards into it that you’re deluding yourself with thinking you could bring it to life.

But your pan starts scrabbling for crumbs.  What if you could just see those eyes behind the shades?  What if you could touch his skin for more than half a second?  And then you spend one morning kneading at your nook and thinking about kissing his shoulders and neck while he holds your hand.  It’s called a crush because that’s what’s happening to your mind.  You’re fucked.

You keep it to yourself.  Bro is like a missing fang in your head: you keep returning to touch your tongue to the empty space, feeling vulnerable.  Your thoughts aren’t as wild when you see him for real.  He’s there every single time you go visit Dave.  You wouldn’t dare stop going because you know Strider would call you out on it.  So you see Bro frequently.  And he can’t just ignore you and help facilitate a healthy dose of cold reality to help you get your skull on straight.  No, it’s always, “’Sup, Vantas?” and the obligatory fist-bump. 

He talks to you.  Asks you how your shitty life is going, what wicked shenanigans you’re getting up to, if the reason why you keep coming around is cuz you can’t get enough of his superior Strider charisma.  He also says things like, “If you and Dave wanna go at it, just hit me up with a text. I’ll put more effort into not kicking Dave’s door down to harass ya’ll.”

And it makes you blush and splutter and he doesn’t actually wink at you but his shades do this glinty thing and you want to yell and call him a fucking idiot but you  _can’t_.  So, for once in your life, you end up speechless and go sulking away behind a slammed door after he walks off all smug.

“Your brother thinks we’re pailing,” you snap at Dave before slumping onto the sofa.  This is all his fault.  It really isn’t but you feel like blaming someone other than yourself right now.  You can blame yourself again in the next five seconds.

“No he doesn’t,” Dave says.  “If he really thought we were fucking, he would’ve pelted you with condoms.”

“Those still exist?”

“He saved some.  I think he’s sentimental about ‘em.”

You sigh heavily and point your metaphorical blame dagger back at your own jugular, feeling particularly suicidal and decide to spontaneously confess that you found Bro Strider’s porn and watched the lot.

This doesn’t produce any wild reaction or outrage.  Dave continues fiddling around with his film negatives.

“Any good?” he asks after the short silence.

“Fuck if I know,” you groan loudly, frustrated, “human sex is freakish and disgusting.”

You leave it at that and Dave lets you.

That’s the morning you don’t bother sleeping but hang around in their living room waiting for Bro to come back from his Friday morning DJ gig.  The sun on this planet isn’t deadly.  It’s still caustic on your eyes if you look at it directly for too long but it doesn’t hurt to stand in the sunshine at midday.  You’re still a nocturnal race and the eternal mildness of daylight has become synonymous with freedom instead of entrapment.  Trolls go out in the daylight to escape from the rigors of their nightly lives.  It’s for people without fear.  You wonder what Bro’s inky black skin looks like in the gentleness of the sun. 

It makes sense for Bro to be where there is light, you think.

When he comes home, you’re scrunched up on the futon, zoned out on a carousel of errant thought and fantasy to keep you awake.

“Hey, Vantas,” he calls to you as he locks the door behind him.  “Whacha doin’ up?”

“Being phenomenally bored out of my pan,” you say, voice garbling from the back of your throat due to disuse.  You sit up, stretching out your arms and legs while you yawn and chirr gently.  You’re sleepy.

“Hungry?” he asks.  Bro flops down next to you on the futon with an overstuffed bag of Far Eastern fare.  You rifle through it until you find a wax paper pouch full of skewered meat chunks.  It’s familiar, this.  Only now, you’re not intimidated out of your skull about your company.  Still in awe of him, sure.  You’re never get over that.  He’s just too beautiful.  But you’re not so much afraid as you are wistful.  Or pathetic.  And you roll your eyes at yourself while you lick sticky-sweet glaze off your lips. You dig another skewer out of the pouch and then hold it out for Bro to take.

“…work good?” you ask him quietly.

“Sure was,” he says.  “Place was alive from sunrise to sunset.  Gorgeous fuckin’ sight.”

You hum ambiguously in response and sigh deeply before nibbling a little more. 

“I’ve never been to a club,” you eventually say, your tongue fiddling with the skewer between your fangs as you entertain nonsensical thoughts, dazed from exhaustion.

He snorts.

“That a hint?”

“Just making conversation you irritating fuckface,” you growl.  There’s no real ire in it.

“If you’re wonderin’ about it, then you should go,” he says, kicking out those mile-long legs to rest on the coffee table.  “It’s a trip.” 

“Fuck no,” you mumble.  “I’d get mauled within an inch of my life, I just know it.  That or completely fucking humiliated.  Or it would be a fucking waste of everyone’s life.  I wouldn’t even know what to do.  What do people even do there?”

“Whatever they feel like,” he tells you, shrugging as he flicks fried noodles into his mouth with chopsticks.  “Sounds to me like you’re in need of an escort.  Someone to show you the ropes.”

You arch a sleepy eyebrow in his direction.

“You?” you ask.

“I’d say Dave but that little shit would just get distracted.  No chivalry whatsoever.”

“You’re gonna take me to a club,” you repeat blandly.

“Sure.  Tomorrow, eight o’ clock.  It’s a date.”  His shades glint over that sharp smirk.  “Wear something cool and comfortable.  Shit gets hot fast.”

“Are you fucking kidding me?”

“Not a chance; I’m for real here.  Lemme take you out for a day.  Maybe I’ll get to see a smile. I bet you keep one behind all that scowl.”

“Fuck you, Strider.  When I hate it and die a horrific, gruesome death due to agonizing tedium and forced sociability with the world’s idiots, I hope they make you clean my entrails off the floor with nothing but your regretful tears and that stupid hat.”

He chuckles at you and doesn’t say anything more.  Just turns on the TV and plays some glitched-out nonsense game.  You watch him for ten minutes more after you fill your stomach.  And then you crash hard, curling up right next to him on the futon.

You’re there still when you wake up, late night.  Bro is nowhere to be found.  But the rest of the futon is a little warm.  Your sweater smells faintly of him….

 

* * *

You shove your hands into the pockets of the worn, gray cargo shorts that Dave gave you.  He also gave you a black tank top and a handful of polished steel bangles which you took and raised your eyebrows at.

“Just wear ‘em,” he said.  So you did.  Because past you is an idiot who trusts the “wisdom” of Dave Strider over your own common sense.  Bro is wearing what he usually wears.  White polo.  Ridiculous shades.  Black jeans.  Loafers with spats.  What he is not wearing is his hat.  The softness of his hair is styled spiky and tousled.  You keep eyeing it because you wonder what it would feel like in your fingers.

“Lookin’ good,” he says as he gestures with a nod at the open apartment door.

“Don’t waste your breath,” you sigh, frowning.

“I mean it.  You’re hot under the baggy pants and dumpy sweater.  You work out? I spy some muscles on ya.  Bet you’ll be a good dancer.”  Your scoff comes out so loud—because you’re also blushing like a loon—that it makes you wheeze.

“As if I would ever go near a dance floor,” you say, throwing your hands out.  The bangles rattle and chime on your skinny wrists and you blink, latently remembering them while Bro follows you out.

“You’ll change your mind when you get there.  Everyone does.”

You don’t bother arguing with him.  But groan and hide your bejangled hands in your pockets again.

You spend the drive in silence, your leg jittering while you stare out the window towards the rising sun.  The sky is seeping pale lavender into the black and stars.  The truck’s radio plays rap songs that you don’t know but have strangely familiar melodies

He drives you into the city where the skyscrapers crowd each other in their inky towers and you dick around in the lull and weave of morning traffic.  Finally, Bro finds a garage and parks in a reserved space on the ground floor.

“Is this spot actually yours, Strider?” you ask him as you jostle the door handle and kick your way out.

“’S got my name on it, don’t it?” he says, flicking the metal sign bolted to the brick wall in front of the parking space.  ‘D. Strider,’ it says in black lettering.  And beneath is a stylized ‘LoLaR.’

You stop and blink at the sign.  He waits for you and you can feel him grinning as if he’s pressing his smirk against your ear.  The thought makes you flush a little.

“Does that stand for –?”

“Yep.”

“That’s the club we’re going to, right?”

“Mmhmm.”

“Who owns it?”

“Me, technically.  My name’s on the papers.”

“You’re fucking with me.”

“Oh, please….”

“How the fuck did I not know about this?” you demand, turning to face Bro, expecting answers.  He shrugs with a shit-eating grin and meanders away and your expectations are thwarted.

He tells you a little about the club.  About how it was Rose’s little idea and how it’s technically hers, he just takes care of it for her.

“It was a gift.”

“I didn’t know you and Lalonde were friends,” you mumble.  The two of you approach the front of the club, the huge sign glittering down at you in white and purple neon.

“Rose and I are the bosomest of buddies,” he says, waving at the bouncer by the door.  There line to get in is so long that it wraps all the way around the block.  “All tea parties and spa days.”

You both head inside, entering a small atrium that’s tacked with black soundproofing panels on the walls.  At the other end of the room are elevator doors.  The button only calls for going up, which Bro hits and the doors open for you to go in.  Elevator isn’t too big and it only has four buttons: top floor, bottom floor, open doors and the alarm.  The space is close and dark but warm.

“Should just about make it in time,” Bro says, checking his cell phone as you ascend.

“In time for what?”

“Sunrise.”  He smiles at you and you cage a chirp behind your fangs.  “Place’ll be a little excited but just stick close to me.  I’ll look after you.”

You hear bass reverberating through the metal walls, the hum of loud music and voices clashing beneath it.  Something in the air has shifted.  It puts your fangs on edge and you chew at your lip, suddenly nervous as you eye the elevator doors warily.

A hand wraps around your hip and you’re tugged close against a large, warm body and you don’t possess enough self-control to keep back the chirr of surprise and satisfaction.  God, he’s  _touching_  you.  Keeping you near, keeping you safe.  You are warm all over, pleasure washing through your limbs and making you sigh.  It feels so nice…. You allow yourself to nose at him, just a little…just a little indulgence.

He chuckles softly and rubs your side.  The elevator halts.  The doors open.

There are. Way. Too many people here.  Black skin, gray skin, tall, short, of all different builds and blood colors.  The space before you is so wide.  At the farthest end, there’s a window that looks into what you’re assuming is the DJ booth.  And above that, stretching from wall to wall, is a jutting overhang made out of large mirrors. 

The walls are decorated with prismatic sconces that cast slowing spectrums across the pearlescent paint.  Around the border of the room, people stand and chat with each other, clutching elegant glassware with whimsically colored drinks, all smiling and laughing but inaudible beneath the music that thrums through the atmosphere.  The border is separated from the center of the room—a dancefloor—by partitioned corners of reinforced glass.  Everyone within the crystal walls is dancing.  Hips undulating, arms up or around someone near, bodies pressed together.

You blink.  And then it hits you like a knife in your lungs.

This place is positively  _drowning_  in sex pheromones. 

You’re having a hard time breathing.  Mostly because you’re not letting yourself breathe.  Fuck, what’s going to happen to you if you stay here?  You glance around, frantic.  Everyone looks like they’re all still dressed but….

Oh god, and then you remember that you’re still snuggled up against Bro and panic sets in.  He picks up on it before you can abscond, his grip firm as he leans in and murmurs into your ear.  You shudder and gasp, body filling with the perfume of a hundred beautiful strangers.

“Easy, easy,” he croons.  His voice throbs in you so much deeper than the bass does and you bite your lip hard around a rising moan.  You feel like your bones are boiling.  “I know it’s intense.  Let yourself breathe; it evens out, I promise.”  He nuzzles at your hair and you can’t do anything but hang on tighter as he walks you into the middle of it all.

He takes you around the sparser circumference and you shuffle along stiffly, glancing at the trolls on the dance floor.  It’s then that you notice that the ceiling above it is shiny, black and glistening behind more prism fixtures that don’t do much but throw off tiny slivers of color in random places around the room.

Bro ends up leading you to the DJ booth, accessible only from a hidden staircase behind iridescent wall hangings.  And your jaw almost hits your knees when you enter the booth and see who’s mixing the music.

“Meenah?!”

She’s absolutely the Condesce and absolutely not.  Maybe about Bro’s age, skin just as black, her hair swooped back in thick dreadlocks that hang down to her thighs.  Pierced all over in gold jewelry, snapping bubblegum and bumping her full hips in time to the beats she’s rocking. 

She turns to you and her eyes sharpen, tyrian purple lips widening around her fangs in a predatory smile.  But then her fins do this flappy thing and you’re smiling back in spite of yourself.

“Shouty!” she cries, snatching you up in her arms.  She literally picks you up off your feet and twirls you around.  You’re so lightheaded and dizzy from…everything that you just laugh until she puts you down again.  “God, where you been hiding, you little hermit crab?  I figured I wasn’t ever gonna see you again!”

“Well, what the fuck about you, what are you doing here?”  You’re still smiling like an idiot.  Her arms are still around you.

“My job, what’s it look like, nubby?”

“Your job as DJ in Strider’s club?”

“Damn right.”  She tosses her hair back in a way that made you remember her when she was still small and gray like you.  Makes you feel simultaneously foreign and like you’re right where you belong.  “I’m still learnin’ but Dirk lets me spin Saturdays so I can prove how sick my beats are.”  She looks over your shoulder and holds up her fist.  Strider bumps it, smirking.

“Crowd’s goin’ good, Peix,” he says.  “Lemme buy you a drink before we hit zenith.”

“Yeah, thanks for paying yourself to treat my ass, that’s real grand a’ you,” she sneers at him.  “How ‘bout you put a-hundred percent a’ that money into Roxy’s pocket or I’ll come at ya with my culling fork?”

“Like you gotta even say that,” Bro says before disappearing down the stairs again.

You turn back to Meenah, looking up into her grinning face.

“You’re adorabloodthirsty as ever,” she tells you.  “And like, damn, you been hidin’ some nice guns from me, look at you….”  She strokes your arms like she’s petting a meowbeast.  “Shit, crabby, you’ll be a sleek mothafucker after you molt. Got any takers lined up for your pail?”  She waggles gold-studded eyebrows at you.

“What, no, you crazy fish bitch.”  You’re laughing.  She laughs with you.

“I dunno, looked like Dirk was pretty keen to get up on your cuddlefronds.  He hot on you, Vantas?”

“Like ice is hot in the Arctic,” you say, rolling your eyes.  Dirk, huh?  Suits him, you think.  You want to say it out loud for some reason….

“Just cuz that asshoal doesn’t take those shades off doesn’t mean he wasn’t givin’ me the stink eye the minute he figured out he didn’t have to make introductions.  Boy’s got it out for ya.”

“Strider’s just watching out for me because his brother will be pissed if I come back with PTSD,” you say.

“Uh-huh.  Sure.”  She says it like ‘shoo-ah.’

You end up giggling kind of manically.  The scent of this place is probably getting to you.  Everything is sweet and heady, like walking through a haze of aerosol delight.  Bro was right.  You are starting to feel better.  And you apparently traded you sanity for ‘better’ because when Meenah sits on the only stool and pats her lap, you just park your glutes right on her leather-clad thighs.  She hooks an arm around your hips and fiddles with the soundboard in front of you both while you chat with her.

She tells you about what she’s been up too.  Working at LoLaR some nights, chilling with Porrim on others.  She’s enjoying her life as a normal troll, sans empiric pressures and responsibilities.  You say you’re happy she’s happy.  She gives you a sticky, pink kiss on the corner of your mouth and you blush to the tips of your ears.

Then you find Bro’s standing there with a few of those pretty-looking glasses in either hand.  He passes the flush-red colored one to Meenah who hisses excitedly before downing it all in one swig.  Bro hands her a second one and then holds a skinny little tumbler full of chartreuse liquid and crushed ice out for you.

“What’s this?” you ask.

“’S called a Cherub.  It’s Roxy’s specialty,” he tells you.  He’s smirking his normal grin but it looks plastered on him rather than painted.  You pretend not to notice when Meenah jabs you pointedly in the hip and you take a sip.  It’s sweet.  Cold and fizzy and tastes nostalgic, like those tubes of flavored ice you would suck down in bundles during the boiling dim season months of your wigglerhood.  You love it.  You get an ice headache from drinking it so enthusiastically.

“How long till zenith?” Bro asks Meenah.

“Five minutes or so,” she says, bouncing you on her lap a little. “Gonna ask Shouty for a dance?”

You snort into your glass and eye Bro suspiciously while your body reminds you that you aren’t a seadweller and cannot breathe liquids.

“That was the plan, yeah,” Bro says raising an eyebrow at her as if she asked him if there were stars in the sky.

“Whacha think, Karkat?”   She jostles you again.  You splash your drink on your chin.  “Gonna give ‘im the honor?”

“I can’t dance,” you point out.

“So we can just stand there and sway a little,” Bro says.  “Trust me, you want to be out there at zenith.”

“What’s zenith?”

“Go on, dude,” Meenah says, bumping you off her lap.  “Lemme show you.”  Bro takes you by the hand immediately and Meenah steals your drink, a mischievous fuchsia eye winking at you before you’re pulled back downstairs.

Once you’ve returned to the noise and crowd, Bro lets go of your hand and just pulls you against his side again. 

You approach the dance space and you can already tell there are twice as many people here as there were before.  Most of them aren’t really dancing, though.  They’re just vaguely moving to the beat while they stare at the ceiling.

“Hey, ya’ll make room for Strider and his little guppy there,” Meenah’s voice demands over the speakers.  Suddenly almost every pair of eyes is on you.  You let Bro continue to steer you even though you want nothing more than to turn and run.  People are clearing a path for you.  Lots of them are applauding, calling out to Strider and waving at you.  You don’t stop until you’re in the middle of the dance floor.  Then the crowd closes around you again, music softer as everyone goes back to looking skyward.

Bro stands right behind you, chest against your shoulders, hands on your hips.  The rich scent of everyone and their desires soaks into you through every surface.  It does wonders to ease your anxiety, knowing that you’re surrounded by people who are all anticipating, eager but passive. You close your eyes a moment.  Relax.  Enjoy the feel of Strider’s solidness holding you.  He’s swaying a little too.  You let yourself move with him.  Meenah talks over the speakers some more.

“Ya’ll ready for this?” she calls out.  An uproar rises from all around you, lifting a giddy smile to your lips.  You have no idea what’s going to happen, but you know it’s going to be exciting.  You can already feel your blood pumping faster.  A new song starts up soft and gradually begins to build.  You hear a mechanical whirring noise and open your eyes.

“ _Fiat Lux_ , you gorgeous fuckers,” Meenah bids you before the music reaches crescendo.  The blackness rolls away from the ceiling.  The drumbeats  pound out energetically like the crowd stomping their feet, all fervent.  Then the sun pours in and the room ignites, cheering.

All around you, people dance and grind as the prismatic glass divides the incoming light and spills it over their bodies, dazzling and vibrant.  It glistens off of sleek, black and gray flesh and glitters in their eyes as they all touch and are touched by the sounds of the music, the sounds of each other.  You watch them jump and sway, spin around and embrace each other, kiss each other, all in the shards of rainbow reflections like they have become something more than just the bodies they inhabit.

Chin lifted in the downpour of light, you find yourself shedding tears.  Everything…everyone here… you’re all so beautiful.  And yes, you include yourself.  You’re there experiencing the light with them.  Like you never dreamed was possible.

Bro takes your hands and slowly lifts them towards the sun.  The spectrums catch the polished chrome of your bangles and cast the colors out across your hands.  You gasp and marvel at it like you’re newly hatched and you’re smiling wide through blissed-out tears.

You keep your hands up.  Bro returns his grip to your waist and he moves you to the music, to the beat that everyone else’s heart is pounding to.  You go willingly.  You  _want_  it.  You’re dancing and it doesn’t matter that you don’t have a fucking clue how.  You just are.  You’re celebrating with them all.  Celebrating things you’ve never thought were worth exalting.  Like sunlight.  Color.  Other trolls. Serendipitous intimacy of a room full of strangers.  Sex….

You are suddenly acutely aware of Bro’s face pressed gently against your neck, your hips firmly back against his.  It feels like his entire body is this warm shroud, weighty around you.  And when his lips press oh, so lightly against the sweaty skin of your nape, you keen for him, breathless.  You can feel his shudder wrack your own body.  He’s aroused.  So are you.  Everyone here is; your every breath is the tangled exhales of a few hundred flush-eyed trolls.

So when you grind your hips against Bro, your arms falling back so you can tangle your fingers in his hair, it’s at the whim of those sighs whispering through your every cell.  And it’s the right thing to do.  You know because his hips push forward in answer and the two of you move like you’ve never been without each other.  Your nook throbs, kissed hard by every bass beat of the song and Bro’s hands stroke up and down your chest in slow, steady passes.

You can smell the musk of his own want apart from the mishmash of everyone else.  Bro’s fragrance is intoxicating, spiced and thick like raw honey at the back of your tongue and you’re in utter need of more but you don’t want to move away.  Not even for a second.

 Bro smooths his hands down to your thighs and his knees bend, which makes your knees bend and you both dip low, his hands keeping you steady so you don’t fall while your fingers dig tighter in his hair.  Your head tilts back, mouth falling open to gasp in the air and breathe out shaken sighs.  When he brings you back up again, hips still pressed against yours, his fingers trail all the way up your neck and wrap around your jaw in a brief, careful grip before slipping away again.

“Told you you’d change your mind,” he breathes low in your ear.  You don’t mistake that additional rumble underlining his words.  He’s purring at you.  You give a sharp little tug on his hair and he laughs over the dampness of your skin.

“Shut up, you’re ruining it,” you say.  You don’t think he heard you; the music is still drowning out everything but the closest whispers.

But now that you think about it….

The song begins to crossfade and you turn around.  The colors on Bro’s skin are radiant, glowing off his black flesh like bismuth crystals.  He looks down at you.  His shades are gone.  You swear his eyes were carved from the shocks of orange that you can see reflected in your bangles as you tug him down to you.  You press your lips soft against his ear—breathe for one moment…you want him…—and ask,

“How long can we stay here?”

He shifts, tilting your head so he can mimic your method, and murmurs,

“Forever.”

You know he means it.  And that’s what makes you kiss him.  You slide your hands along his jaw, stand on your toes and mewl as your lips wrap around his and your tongue slips along the seam.  You don’t so much hear as you feel him moaning, his hands cradling your skull firmly as he answers your kiss, sucking your tongue between his fangs.  A shiver shakes your bones from your head to your feet and it makes a little slurry slip out of you.  You’d be horrified if you weren’t busy being horny.  You break the kiss to duck and wipe the mess off your leg before it runs into your shoes and when you stand up, Bro snags your wrist and licks your fingers clean.  Which essentially duplicates the issue and wastes your efforts.

You whine, chirring, needy and he pulls you in close.   Bro manages to part the throng so you can get through.  You don’t want to leave it but you  _really_  don’t want to come all over the dance floor either.

Bro guides you to a side stairwell that leads up a floor and then to a locked door which he opens by punching a number code into its keypad lock.  Behind the door is a room with windows for its furthest wall.  There’s not much in here except plush violet carpet and probably the biggest concupiscent platform you’ve ever seen.  Your knees threaten to give out.

You can hear the club’s music still thrumming beneath you and when you cross and look out of the windows, you see the very dance floor you just escaped from.  Light floods in from all sides. The music still fills you.  Bro’s hands wrap around you and pull you back against him once more.  You’re shaking hard.

“They can’t see us?” you ask before he says something selfless and pitying about how he knows you’re virginal and you don’t have to do this.

“No,” he says instead.  “Do you mind seeing them?”

“I want to see you,” you tell him, turning around.  “All of you, please, let me, stand in the light….”

He’s smiling down at you those eyes still electric and full of energy. And you watch him as he strips his clothes off, bit by bit. 

The cloth sticks to his skin where he’s been sweating and his hair is mussed after he pulls his shirt off.  His muscles ripple with every movement and when he pushes his pants around his thighs you stop him by pinning him against the glass.

His bulge is twisting out of his sheath, thighs stained with drools of generic material.  Against the light he’s panting softly. Every inhale, every exhale shimmering on him in different fractals of color and light.  You like the way it glistens on the lazy twist of his bulge.

“You can finish taking your pants off now,” you say, voice barely even cracking.  Your hand has found its way between your legs.  You literally do not remember doing that.

He laughs at you.  Warmly.  There’s love there.

“You too,” he says making an open gesture to you before kicking his pants and shoes and socks away.

He helps you instead of just watching you the entire time, which you’re thankful for because you hate being a spectacle but then he’s pulling you into the light and staring at you anyway.

“Not to wax poetic on you or nothin’ but you look like a goddamn angel,” Bro whispers to you as he draws your naked body against his own.  You can barely register the cool, sticking softness of your sweaty skin coming together before your bulges go straight for each other and you’re gasping loud.

He moans right back at you and leans in to slide his tongue into your mouth.  You’re practically sobbing into the kiss it feels so good.  So good to have him touch you.  Your nerve endings are electric with sensation.  His fingers grip and tug at you, sliding across your skin and digging in like he never wants to release you.

You don’t know what to do with yourself.  You let your limbs tangle, straddle his propped thigh and rut your nook against smooth skin and hard muscle, smearing bright red genetic material all over him.  You’re making a mess.  There’s a little puddle of orange under his feet. 

You move before you can convince yourself it’s a bad idea and tease your fingers at the lips of his nook while you nibble on his neck and it makes him  _trill_.

“God, fuck me, fuck me, I want you inside,” he pants into your ear.  You only barely keep yourself from coming all over his leg by shoving back from him, getting a few scratches in your skin for your trouble.  He looks at you like he’s more worried that you’re hurt and not at all like he’s aching over any perceived rejection.

“S-Sorry,” you stutter out, forcing yourself to take breaths that fill you with air all the way to your ankles.  “I want to; let me?”

He smiles.  Turns around.  Bends forward with one hand bracing against the glass, the other spreading his nook open for you to see.  You trill and he trills back, swaying his hips at you in a very deliberate tease but you’re not mocked, you are only more enticed. 

You wrap your hands around his hips and lift your head to watch him as your bulge works its way into the soaking throb of soft flesh that is Dirk Strider’s nook.  His name….  You think it to yourself while your head reels.  While the light and colors spill over those wide, obsidian shoulders and ricochet off the glow of his plasma-colored eyes.  He moans and purrs low and his hips roll to the beat that pounds out below your feet.

“Yeah, that’s so good, Karkat,” he shivers, fangs pulling at the skin of his full lips, tongue swiping out to wet them.  “Fuck, you’re so hot, you’re burning inside me, my pussy’s gonna melt around you.”

The word catches a little and then you let it process and it comes back being kinky so you’re extraordinarily okay with it.  You rock your hips against him; with each press he pushes back against you.  And then you feel his bulge twisting back, looking for you.  It’s long enough.  It tickles the root of your own bulge buried inside him and then slides a little lower till it finds your hole.  It caresses and teases and you moan, gasping and whining with your exhales instead of just breathing like a normal person but you can’t  _help_  it, it feels so goddamn good.

“Yes,” you beg him, “yes, yes, please, holy shitfuck mnnghhh!”

His girth is considerable and you’re standing bowlegged while you fuck him and he fucks you right back.  His bulge drives up into you slowly, but reaches so deep that it’s practically penetrating your seedflap.  You are tiny.  He is enormous.  He dwarfs you in every way.  And you’re having sex with Dirk Strider.

“Dirk,” you whine, his name pealing off into a trill.  He hits every nerve just right and your nook flutters and squeezes around him like it’s afraid of him ever leaving.  “Dirk I can’t—I can’t hahhh….I can’t take this, fuck, fuck…!”  Your genetic material is making a slick stain on the floor.  There’s no pail in sight.  You’re going to come right here….

“’S alright, sweets, you can let go…let go for me…,” he croons at you.  His voice is so gorgeously deep…like thunder….  His nook squeezes hard around you in rapid pulses and you lean all the way on him, digging your claws into his shoulders and biting his neck as you fuck him and he  _pounds_  into you and you scream. You come.  You go blind and have nothing except absolute, perfect darkness to cradle you beneath a halo of light as you convulse and cry out and let the most earth-shattering pleasure wrack through you.

You fight to catch your breath, tasting blood on your tongue and you disengage from Bro’s body so you’re not just laying on him and being annoying.  You stumble and almost fall on your ass after dizziness brains you upside the head.  Bro catches you. 

“Hang on there, dizzy angel,” he says as he guides you over to the concupiscent platform and lays you there like you’re made of spun sugar.   You snag his wrist before he can go off and do anything else.

“You’re not done,” you manage to chirp at him.  You tug and tug.  You love that smile.

“Well, nah, but you—”

“Straddle my face,” you croon to him.  “Come in my mouth.”

Watching his eyes widen and his body freeze while an unbidden trill rings out from the lower registers of his voice makes your bulge twitch in interest.  You did that to him. 

“Where’d you learn to be such a kinkster?” he asks you, laughing a little but unable to hide the neediness, the sharp tang of scent from a pheromone spike.

“You,” you say softly.  You smirk at him.  He’s confused at first.  Then he catches on and laughs.  Loud and lovely and with affection in every burst of it.  You chuckle along with him.

“That’s what I get for participating in shitty porn flicks, I guess,” he says.  And then he climbs over you.  His knees planted on either side of your head, thighs brushing your cheeks.  Your stare at the intimate folds of him, gasping quietly when cum splashes on your lips in a little dribble.  You lick it up.  It’s like his pheromone condensed into a liquid.  You want more. 

He braces and reaches back to tangle his fingers with your bulge and pay it gentle attention.  You shiver from residual aftershocks and sensitivity but god, it feels so good, you never want him to stop.

“Let me feel that hot little tongue inside,” he purrs at you.  You obey willingly.  One arm slings over the back of his hips and you pull yourself up to lap deep inside his nook.  Your mouth fills with slurry.  It coats your tongue as you dart it up into him and make him groan with every press of lips.  Your nose nudges at the juncture between his nook and his bulge and sometimes you have to stop, mouth open to breathe and you inhale pure scent: heat and musk.

You stop when he pulls away from you.  You make needy noises and grab for him—you know you’re not great at this, but you gotta keep trying, you  _have_  to make him come, you  _have_  to.

“Spread your legs for me, boy,” he says, moving back until his hips are flush with yours again.  His bulge slides right inside you and you  _scream_.  It makes him growl with want and he wraps his arms tight around you as his hips snap forward.  You feel so raw on the inside and every twitch of him shudders through you.  You can’t do anything but moan.

Your hands reach up.  You’re still wearing your bangles.  They catch the light and clatter against each other with each thrust he gives you.  It’s like he’s pushing your pan out of your skull with every shove inside you.  And then his bulge shifts and  _curls_  and he pushes even more inside of you.

“Dirk!  Dirk, oh god, fuck, fuck, fuck!”

Your back arches hard off the mattress and your claws shred down his shoulders.  There’s so much of him, so much inside and it hurts and it aches but it’s so fucking wonderful that you have no idea how you’re going to come back from this.  Your hips move as if you aren’t in control of them, bucking and shoving yourself even further down on his bulge.

He moans loud and snarls a ragged exhale before catching you by your jaw and forcing your mouth open for a kiss.  A nasty, tongue-fucking, bite-and-spit kiss that leaves you trilling into his mouth and shaking from your shoulders to where your ankles are locked around him.  He’s going to destroy you.  He is a storm and you are a handful of ash.  But he buries himself so deeply and even though you’re shivering with arousal and want and how overwhelming he is, you can tell that you’ve done the same to him.  Even in his porn films, even when he was in the position as you are now, on the brutal end of a glorious, hard fucking, you never saw him so undone.

It makes you chirr and you hold him close to yourself.

“Flushed for you,” you purr in his ear while he ravages you.  While he turns your world backwards and brings you into the light.  While he takes you places you’ve only wished you’ve ever gone.  While he sits you down and tells you to give up your ignorance for the chance at something worth holding onto.

He comes inside you, gasping and moaning into your neck.  And as you fill up and your eyes water from how gorgeously it makes you ache, his kisses you.  Kisses your mouth deeply and kisses you all over your face, all over your neck, all over your shoulders and your chest and back up again until he’s mouthing and tonguing gently at your horns.  You whimper.

He gathers you into his arms and cradles you in his lap and you kiss him back when he kisses you more.  His eyes look down into yours and he smiles at you soft like you are his singular joy in life.  Even though you know that’s ridiculous.  He has so many wonderful things.

The club booms beneath you.  It drums along with your pulse and you take long, uneven breaths to come down from your high.  You’re full of his genetic material.  He’s full of yours.  You both need a bucket something fierce.  But it’s okay to wait a while.  It’s alright to lay in his arms…watch him look at you like you’re his treasure.  It’s okay to let yourself cry a little.

“You wanna be my little heart?  That what I’m hearing?” he asks you as he nuzzles his nose against yours.  You bite your lip to keep yourself from weeping hysterically.  And after another breath or two you say,

“Yeah.  I want that.”

 

* * *

After you molt, you’re only two inches shorter than him.  You can look straight into his eyes and make him bite his lip because according to him, your eyes are like straight-up lava flows and they burn him from the inside out, baby. 

He makes raps about how gorgeous you are.  He talks about your black-as-sin skin and how one look from you could ignite the midnight.  You spend every weekend dancing in the daylight.  You lose yourself there.  Every time.  You kiss strangers and fuck friends and fuck strangers and kiss friends and he’s always right there.  Sometimes participating along with you.  Sometimes just a voyeur.  Eyes always on you.

You say you’re matesprits but you’re more than that.  He’s a cataclysm and you’re a calamity.  When people watch you dance together they stop what they’re doing and join you because they need to be near.  And you know what that’s like.  You know how just one soul can be so beautiful that you can’t help but press yourself as close as possible.

You learn to love yourself and love everyone else through loving him.  And that is what makes you want to live.


End file.
